The Full Text of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
1Nature’s first green is gold,
2Her hardest hue to hold.
3Her early leaf’s a flower;
4But only so an hour.
5Then leaf subsides to leaf.
6So Eden sank to grief,
7So dawn goes down to day.
8Nothing gold can stay.
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Introduction
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"Nothing Gold Can Stay" was written in 1923 by the American poet Robert Frost. It was published in a collection called New Hampshire the same year, which would later win the 1924 Pulitzer Prize. Frost is well-known for using depictions of rural life to explore wider social and philosophical themes. "Nothing Gold Can Stay," written when Frost was 48, is no exception, using the metaphor of spring's ending to examine the transience of youth, beauty, and ultimately life itself.
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Summary
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In early spring, the fresh buds on the trees are gold. This color is the quickest to disappear from the natural world, however. The fresh blossoms on the trees are flowers, but these flowers disappear quickly too. They turn into leaves that fall to the ground, just as humankind fell from the paradise of the Garden of Eden, and just as the promising early light of morning gives way to daytime. Nothing beautiful, fresh, or pure can last forever.
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Themes
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The Transience of Life, Beauty, and Youth
“Nothing Gold Can Stay” is about the fleeting nature of beauty, youth, and life itself. According to the poem, nothing “gold”—essentially nothing pure, precious, or beautiful—can last forever.
The poem begins by focusing on changes in the natural world. The “first green” leaves of spring are compared to gold, nature’s most prized metal, immediately establishing gold as symbolic of everything that is fresh, youthful, and beautiful. Yet this “hue” is also the “hardest” for nature, personified in the poem as a female figure, “to hold.” Nature is trying to stop the freshness of early spring from fading, perhaps like a mother who wishes her children would stay young forever.
This is impossible, and readers know that the first buds of spring will mature and, eventually, fall. The speaker then speeds the natural cycle up to hammer home this point, saying that the first blossom of spring lasts “only … an hour.” This is an exaggeration of course, but it emphasizes just how fleeting this fresh, lovely stage of life is. The precious beauty and innocence of youth, the poem is saying, flashes by in the blink of an eye.
The speaker then broadens the poem’s scope to include Eden, the biblical paradise from which human beings were expelled according to the Book of Genesis. Eden was a land free from sin and suffering that infamously and inevitably ended, the speaker says, just as the promise of the new morning (“dawn”) must give way to the reality of the day. In each of these examples, something beautiful and innocent—untainted by the world—proves fleeting, unable to endure.
In the second half of the poem the speaker also notably starts using language related to sinking or descending to describe the path of everything that is at one time young and beautiful. This suggests that the inability of anything “gold” to last is because life itself is a corrupting force that drags such beauty down. Thus, Eden didn’t simply end; it “sank to grief.” This implies that it began on a high—but, like leaves and flowers that flutter to the ground from tree tops, couldn’t stay in such a vaulted place, protected from earthly realities. Similarly, "dawn goes down to day."
The idea of dawn going “down to day” is especially unusual, and inverts the familiar image of the sun rising into daylight. Metaphorically, dawn can be interpreted as the beginning of a life—a blank slate for a new day. Its going “down to day” thus highlights the loss or tainting of that opportunity, as well as the process of aging and, ultimately, death. Indeed, the poem looking downward subtly evokes burial and the notion that all life inevitably ends up in the ground.
Overall, then, the poem argues that nothing pure or perfect can last; life takes its toll on everything, and death awaits us all. The promise of spring is followed by autumn and winter; green leaves will turn brown and begin to rot. Yet the poem may not necessarily be trying to create melancholy. Instead, perhaps it’s pushing the reader to accept the reality of such transience in order to better appreciate golden moments while they last.
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
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Line 1
Nature’s first green is gold,
The poem starts by asserting that the first "green" of nature is "gold." At first this might be confusing—how can something that's "green" also be another color? But the "green" here refers less to actual color and more to the idea of fresh life; calling something (or someone) "green" means that it's new, innocent, inexperienced. The speaker is saying that the first, fresh growths in Nature, personified as a female entity throughout the poem, are "gold."
Taken literally, "gold" refers to the fact that spring leaves are indeed often a lighter, brighter color than the darker foliage of summer. In fact, new buds on trees are often a very pale green or yellow in color. But "gold" is also symbolic here. Gold is, of course, a precious metal, associated with wealth, beauty, and perhaps purity. Through this metaphor, then, the speaker is saying that the fresh buds of spring are beautiful and valuable. New life, then, is presented as something precious. This connection is underscored by the alliterative hard /g/ sound between "green" and "gold."
At the same time, the language here suggests that things will change, and that something else will follow: the line's focus on "first" green implies that this is a transitional state, and that a different "green"—a different form of life—will come later.
"First green" is given extra significance because of its adjoining stress. It's a spondee, a metrical beat in a line of poetry that has two accented syllables (stressed-stressed). This is only one of two times that a spondee appears in the entire poem, which means its double stress is meant to be noticed—this beautiful "first green" is meant to stand out. The reader is forced to slow down upon reaching this point, and to examine the significance of the words. This ties into the idea of wanting to hold on to something for longer than possible.
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Line 2
Her hardest hue to hold.
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Line 3
Her early leaf’s a flower;
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Line 4
But only so an hour.
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Line 5
Then leaf subsides to leaf.
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Line 6
So Eden sank to grief,
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Line 7
So dawn goes down to day.
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Line 8
Nothing gold can stay.
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Symbols
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Gold
Gold in the poem represents youth, beauty, and purity. This is a common symbolic association. Think of when people refer to an era as a "golden age" to mean a period of happiness, peace, and prosperity. When the speaker says that "Nothing gold can stay," this is thus a symbolic reference to the idea that no beauty or joy—really, no good thing—can last forever.
More specifically, the poem begins with a comparison between the first buds of spring—"Nature's first green"—and gold. Gold is a precious and valuable metal, often used for ornamentation and jewelry. It's also quite soft. The metaphor here thus implies that the first buds of spring are like gold in that they are beautiful, precious, and delicate.
The word "green" itself specifically connotes youth, innocence, and inexperience. As such, there are really two metaphors at work here. The first growths of springtime are literally fleeting in that they quickly give way to the darker, lush leaves of summer. But the poem is also saying that youthful beauty and innocence are precious, and that these qualities slip through nature's fingers all too quickly as well.
Many of the images that Frost uses, while not all explicitly described as "gold," are nevertheless associated with the color. Spring flowers may be bright yellow, for example, and the glow of a sunrise at dawn is golden hued.
Gold is also relatively rare. As such, a further implication might be that it’s precisely the impermanence of all these things that makes them so precious in the first place.
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Nature
Nature in the poem comes to represent the life cycle more broadly. This is specifically illustrated by the journey of a “leaf” from infancy to maturity. The “leaf” represents the changes that take place over the course of a life.
Nature's "first green" is a reference to the delicate leaves and buds of early spring, which are indeed often a pale green or yellow color. The word "green" is associated with youth and naivety, implying that this represents childhood—the early stage of life filled with innocence and potential. That this green is "gold" implies that childhood is precious.
Alas, this phase of life is over all too quickly; it is "Nature's ... hardest huge to hold." The personification of Nature as a female figure suggests the natural world as a kind of mother trying to preserve her children's youth.
"Nature's ... early leaf," in turn, is "a flower." A flower, too, is beautiful yet delicate. However, the leaf is only beautiful for "an hour." The speaker is being hyperbolic here; flowers typically bloom for longer than an hour! This exaggeration is meant to highlight the speed at which life moves, how the beauty and innocent of youth so quickly give way to maturity and, eventually, decay and death.
The leaf's description as being "gold and "green" can also be taken as saying something about personal changes. Greenness, again, is often associated with purity and naivety. The leaf's implied discoloration thus implies that life itself is a loss of innocence and purity. This is heightened by the reference to the Fall of Man from the Garden of Eden in line 6 of the poem. Not only do individual human beings lose their pure, precious beauty as they age, the poem implies, but in fact all humankind has already lost the pure beauty that existed in Eden.
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Alliteration
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" packs a lot of alliteration into its 8 lines. This alliteration combines with the poem'a steady meter and rhyming couplets to give it a very musical sound; the poem is easy to memorize and satisfying to read aloud. This musicality, in turn, adds to the poem's sense of having an important message that should be passed on to others.
Alliteration also connects certain words in the poem. For example, in line 1 the hard /g/ sound shared be "green" and "gold" connects the two words on the level of sound, supporting their metaphorical connection within the line.
Line 2 then contains the most alliteration per line, with four repeated /h/ sounds:
Her hardest hue to hold.
The /h/ sound requires an exhalation of breath, making the line feel like a sigh—perhaps reflecting a sense of resignation at the fact that this golden hue simply cannot last. The reader's breath also almost runs out by the end of the line, reflecting the idea of time being up.
In line 6, the sibilance of "So" and "sank" evokes the air being let out of a balloon, reflecting the feeling of Paradise sinking into the earth. Sibilance is also evocative of a hissing snake—which, of course, was the creature who tempted Eve and spurred the Fall of Man in the Bible.
The alliterative letters within the lines move from /g/ to /h/, to /l/, to /s/, and lastly to /d/. This movement from sound to sound emphasizes the fact that nothing can stay. This alliterative progression also very subtly forces the tongue to move in the mouth from high to low. The /g/ and /h/ sounds require a higher tongue position than the more guttural /l/ and weighty /d/ sounds. This emphasizes the idea of falling as the poem moves from higher, airy sounds to darker ones. This underlines the message of the poem, that everything which is at one time light and youthful must sink into dullness.
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Metaphor
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Assonance
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Anaphora
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Consonance
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Personification
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Hue
- Subsides
- So
- Eden
Hue-
A color or shade.
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
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Form
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" is a compact poem that packs a lot into its eight lines. These lines can be broken down into four sets of rhyming couplets. The form is simple and predictable, a sense further supported by the poem's steady meter and rhyme scheme. This simplicity makes the poem easy to read and remember, and allows its message to ring out clearly.
The poem can also be thought of as having two sections. The first, lines 1 to 4, focus on establishing the fleeting nature of youth and beauty. In this chunk, lines 1 and 3 introduce the fresh beauties of early spring—the young buds on the trees and flowering plants. Lines 2 and 4, however, assert that such beauty and purity can't last.
Lines 5 to 8 then take an even more pessimistic tone. Whereas the transition from beauty to transience took place over two lines in the first half of the poem, now each transition is condensed into a single line: leaf to leaf, Eden to grief, dawn to day. This second half of the poem piles loss on top of loss, and does so at a rapid clip. The speed of the second half the poem reflects the argument of the first: that all these "golden" things are fleeting.
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Meter
The poem's primary meter is iambic trimeter. This means that each line contains three iambs, poetic feet with an unstressed-stressed, or da DUM, syllable pattern. Take line 2:
Her hardest hue to hold.
Iambic meters generally echo the way people talk, giving the poem a steady yet predictable feel. The meter is very regular throughout the poem, giving the lines a strong sense of inevitability; everything must keep pushing forward, just as time itself never stops moving forward. The steady rhythm also makes the poem easy to memorize. This adds to the feeling that it's a kind of maxim or a proverb—advice to be given, rather than an idea meant to be thoroughly interrogated by the reader or listener.
While most of the poem uses iambic tetrameter, there are two important exceptions to this metrical structure. This break from the steady iambic in the rest of the poem is a clear sign that the poet wants the reader to take note of these lines particularly. The first comes in line 1:
Nature's first green is gold,
And the next is in line 8:
Nothing gold can stay.
Both lines open with a trochee, which is the opposite of an iamb. Where an iamb goes da DUM, a trochee is stressed-unstressed, or DUM da. In the first line "Nature" is trochaic, and in the last "Nothing." The first word of each line is emphasized, creating a sonic connection between "Nature" and "Nothing" (a connection further enhanced by the fact that both words begin with the letter n). This is an interesting way of underlining the message of the poem: that nothing lasts. By comparing the vast idea of "Nature" and everything it contains with the finality denoted by "Nothing," the speaker implies that everything, even nature itself, will eventually end.
The first line of the poem also contains a spondee, a beat in a poetic line that consists of two accented syllables (stressed-stressed). The spondee of "first green" slows down the line, forcing the reader to linger over this phrase. The poem is about the impossibility of holding on to beauty or youthful innocence forever. Stretching out the meter via "first green" suggests that the speaker is trying to hold onto this freshness for just a little while longer.
The final line of the poem is also missing a syllable. Iambic tetrameter should have six syllables per line, but here there are only 5:
Nothing gold can stay.
The poem itself—an artifact of beauty—is thus cut short too soon.
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Rhyme Scheme
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" has a very tight rhyme scheme. The poem consists of four couplets and every end word is perfectly rhymed, resulting in the following pattern:
AABBCCDD
The tight rhyme makes it enjoyable to read aloud and pleasing to the listener's ear. This simple rhyme structure is also perhaps comparable to a nursery rhyme, the first poems children learn. Nursery rhymes often impart absolute truths or messages in a simple and memorable format. In the same way, "Nothing Gold Can Stay" presents a sweeping idea about the transience of life itself in a clear, concise, and seemingly simple package.
The poem's rigid structure has a sense of inevitability to it too, carrying the poem forward and making it sonically predictable. That is, the reader comes to expect that each end word will have its rhyme in the next line. This mirrors the message of the poem—that seasons, time, and life must march onward toward their inevitable conclusion.
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Speaker
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It is unclear who exactly the speaker is. It's possible that it's Frost himself, but the poem offers no name, age, nor gender. The poem isn't about the speaker; instead its message is meant to present a universal truth about the fleeting nature of youth and beauty, and as such the speaker's identity doesn't come into play.
That said, the speaker's tone is crucial to the poem. Whoever this speaker is, they're pretty pessimistic, insisting that nothing beautiful will stay that way forever. And although the speaker is essentially offering a personal opinion about the inability of youth and beauty to remain, the lack of a clear identity makes the speaker's voice seem all-knowing and impossible to argue against. There is no "I" in the poem. The information is simply presented as fact, contributing to the feeling of hopelessness that runs through the poem.
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“Nothing Gold Can Stay” Setting
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"Nothing Gold Can Stay" can be thought of as having no specific setting, or of having a sweeping setting that encompasses the entirety of human history. Its first few lines may transport the reader to a sunny day amongst trees in early spring, but this soon changes as the timeframe within the poem speeds up. Those buds and flowers turn into leaves, which then fall to the ground in line 5—suggesting a swift passage of spring to summer to autumn. The poem then rushes back to the dawn of human history according to the Bible, when Adam and Eve were cast out of the Garden of Eden and sin and suffering were introduced into the world. The timeline then becomes its smallest yet, encompassing just a sunrise. And the final line appears to exist outside of time altogether, and instead to be simply a commentary on it.
This lack of singular, specific setting supports the reading of the poem's pithy message as a kind of aphorism (a short, memorable saying which gives insight into human character) that's being offered from the speaker to the reader.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Nothing Gold Can Stay”
Literary Context
"Nothing Gold Can Stay" was published in Frost's fifth poetry collection, New Hampshire, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1924. The collection contains some of Frost's best known poems, such as "Fire and Ice" and "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening." Frost worked on "Nothing Gold Can Stay" for three years, from 1920-1923, and wrote six versions of the poem in total.
Frost was writing in the early 20th century during the modernist literary period, a time when many writers aimed to disrupt stiff, traditional poetic structures and forms. Frost's work does contain some modernist qualities in that he favors natural diction (New England dialect in particular) and blank verse in many of his poems.
That said, Frost also uses more familiar poetic structures in much of his work (this poem, for instance, is highly metrical and has a strict rhyme scheme). His focus on nature and rural life also contains echoes of the romantic literary period, a time when poets sought to capture the mystery, wonder, and power of the natural world.
Among his contemporaries, Frost is often compared to Robert Graves. Both were writing at around the same time, and used more formal poetic structures than others writing in the modernist period. Both poets favored traditional forms, rhythm and meter in their poetry.
Historical Context
Between 1900 and 1912, Frost and his family lived on the 30-acre Derry Farm. This period strongly influenced Frost's poetry and his relationship to the natural world. Frost's focus on nature and rural life is especially significant given general society's move towards industrialization at the time he was writing. However, Frost's poetry spoke to a wide population of people who were starting to question industrialization, especially in the aftermath of the First World War.
Indeed, although there is no direct reference to historical context in this poem, themes of loss and unease tend to run throughout Frost's poetry and reflect the historical events of the period in which he was writing. The poem was written in 1923, just five years after the end of WWI and just three years after the end of the Spanish Flu pandemic. These two events in combination caused the deaths of millions of people, and imbued survivors with a sense of disillusionment towards the promises of safety and prosperity preached by modern society. In "Nothing Gold Can Stay," the speaker's lamenting the loss of youth and beauty may be a way of highlighting the tragedy of those who had lost their lives and naivete in the previous decade.
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More “Nothing Gold Can Stay” Resources
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External Resources
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A Reading by the Poet — Listen to Frost performing his poem live.
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More Poems by the Author — A selection of poems by Frost, plus a more detailed biography of the poet.
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A Documentary — A 40-minute documentary, featuring live footage of the author and offering some insight into his life and experiences.
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Video Biography — A short video biography summarising the poet's life and career highlights.
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"The Outsiders" — Listen to a character recite Frost's poem in a scene from the classic 1980s coming-of-age drama, The Outsiders."
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Robert Frost
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